Chemical shift artifacts can corrupt blood flow quantification
in Phase Contrast MRI (PC-MRI). Specifically, perivascular fat can chemically
shift across the vessel wall and into the lumen, thereby leading to over or
underestimation of blood velocity within a vessel, depending on the imaging
protocol. The degree to which chemical shift disrupts blood flow measurements
depends on the readout bandwidth and the echo time. We propose that using a
higher readout bandwidth reduces chemical shift artifacts in PC-MRI and
concomitantly improves the accuracy of quantitative blood flow measurements.